


body heat

by foundCarcosa



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Frottage, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-16
Updated: 2013-11-16
Packaged: 2018-01-01 17:33:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1046605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foundCarcosa/pseuds/foundCarcosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's cold, both figuratively and literally, in the world outside the Circle. And Duncan is warm, very warm.</p>
            </blockquote>





	body heat

"Are you sad about leaving the Circle?"

The Grey Warden asks this just as Anansi is staring out over the Fereldan hinterlands, the rolling hills dusted with autumn colour, the fields bursting with the fruits of freeholders’ labours… Through the Circle’s tiny, high-set windows, all he ever saw was sky.

A pang in his solar plexus makes him grimace; a whiff of the dry, musty air, the scent of ancient books and lyrium dust. He can almost feel the strange comfort of his former prison’s stone walls, the well-worn apprentice robes on his body, the slightly-scratchy blanket under him.

He looks up again, and the vast and forbidding world rolled out before him, uncertain and indifferent. He swallows thickly, feeling nauseated.

"I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry." Duncan’s low, rich voice sounds like the way his hand on Anansi’s shoulder feels, and the mage can breathe again.

"I’m not sad," he responds finally, but he can’t stop himself from impulsively looking back.

==

"They hated me there." The fire crackles, sounding nothing like the controlled magical fire conjured up during Circle lessons. Smelling of earth and wood, its light lambent instead of garish.  
Duncan hollows out a heel of bread and fills it from the stew bubbling in the pot over the fire, quiet as he waits for Anansi to continue.

"All of them. Except for Irving, and maybe some of the enchanters. But the other apprentices, they called me names and botched my spells and did everything they could to make my life miserable.  
I don’t miss them at all,” he finishes, flatly.

"What about Jowan?" Duncan asks, quietly, and hands him the other hunk of bread.

"What about him? He used me. He _lied_ to me.” He is used to keeping his truths secret, keeping them safe, so no one could exploit them or make fun of him. But Duncan is older, and not of the Circle. Duncan is human, but humble. And Duncan is attentive, as if nothing matters but what Anansi is saying, and that undoes him, horribly.

"Jowan said I was his friend, but I do not know if either of us knows what that word means." Sniffling, he focuses on his food, fishing out a hunk of meat and stuffing it into his mouth; it is still too hot, and he cries out as his tongue is scorched.

Duncan smiles, hiding it behind a cough, and offers him water to take the sting off.

"I can’t be a Grey Warden," Anansi blurts out, apropos of nothing, tears already streaming down his cheeks. "I’m a mess. I’m _stupid._ I don’t know how to do anything. I barely know magic, only enough to… kill spiders in the storage room…”

"Now, I don’t think that’s true at—"

"And here you are, all… worldly and stately and… such nice shining armour… and nice hair… listening to me blubber like a child…"

Duncan murmurs comfortingly, raising a hand to Anansi’s back, and the elf leans towards him like a housecat seeking the petting hand.

He guiltily tries to remain focused on comforting his charge, but all he can think is, _Nice hair, he said… no one’s said that since…_

==

Unable to sleep, for different reasons, they awaken shortly before dawn. Frost crackles around them as they stretch and roll over, and Anansi finds that he’d had no idea what it meant to be cold until now.

Duncan sits up with a quiet groan, his unfettered hair tumbling into his eyes, and Anansi is suddenly painfully awake. All over.

"Sleep well?" the Warden asks, his voice full of gravel, with one of those rueful smiles that means he already knows the answer. Anansi slowly sits up, then shivers violently and yanks the thin blanket around him.

"C-cold," he stammers, eyes wide.  
Duncan laughs, then cuts his eyes over with a speculative look that makes the elf’s heart skip.  
He tilts his head in a “come here” gesture, and Anansi thinks he’s seeing things, or reading it wrong, so he just stares.

"Come over here," Duncan clarifies, a smile touching his lips. "The first rule to staying warm in Ferelden is preserving body heat."

The stars begin to wink out in preparation for the dawn, and Anansi crawls from his pallet to Duncan’s, and Duncan wraps an arm around him, and the warmth rolling off his body enfolds him like a good thick blanket.

"You have a lot of hair," the man remarks, lifting some of it in his hand.

"I never cut it," Anansi responds, although he can barely think about such mundane matters now, not with this man so close to him.

And it begins just like that, with an offhand comment, and Duncan’s fingers in his hair, combing through it, getting closer to his scalp. Anansi shifts, suddenly too warm, his thigh too flush with Duncan’s, and he accidentally pinches the swelling flesh at his groin, which makes him hiss and clutch it without thinking.

Duncan notices, and shame floods Anansi’s veins like ice water, but the man lifts his chin and gives him a look, the same speculative look that got him to scoot over in the first place, and there’s a keenness in his eyes that suggests things the mage had only read about.  
The Warden doesn’t have to ask. Anansi is already nodding, lips parted, skin flushed.

 _Ah, youth; how it quickens like dry kindling,_ Duncan has time to think, before he’s lying back down and coaxing Anansi onto him, and he intends on at least getting them to their smalls but the elf grinds into him once and Duncan sucks in breath so fast he thinks he’ll choke on it, his large hands clamping around those thin, lithe thighs.

Anansi doesn’t seem to care about their still-clothed state, either, preoccupied with Duncan’s hair the way Duncan had been with his, his tongue darting out to wet his lips, and the Warden leans up and kisses him, draws him down with him, bodies flush as their hips flex and roll.

Breathing hard into his mouth, Duncan grabs hold of Anansi’s ass and squeezes, keeping him still as he thrusts upward, and in that final motion he comes, suddenly, body rigid and singing like a tuning fork, head tilting back to give a shuddering gasp. So taken with this display, Anansi doesn’t realise his organ is twitching, swelling, and the tiniest shift of his hips pushes him off the edge right after the man under him.

 _“Maker,”_ Duncan finally groans, his chest still heaving and the cooling wet spots at their linen-clad crotches growing uncomfortable, “that’s… not what I intended to do at all.”

"I- I’m sorry, it’s my fault, I got… uh, excited…"

"Just gives us an excuse to do it again another time," Duncan points out with a breathless chuckle, then frowns and flicks an insect off his shoulder. "… Perhaps in an inn, what do you say?"


End file.
